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Thomas Kober

@tttthomasssss.bsky.social
3.6K followers 633 following 139 posts

Linguational Computist Bayesian Naïveist Entropy Ma(r)ximist Probably Approximately Correctist

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 16/12/2025
I wrote this brief talk on why “augmenting diversity” with LLMs is empirically unsubstantiable, conceptually flawed, and epistemically harmful and a nice surprise to see the organisers have made it public synthetic-data-workshop.github.io/papers/13.pdf
title: Cheap science, real harm: the cost of replacing human
participation with synthetic data

author: Abeba Birhane

abstract: Driven by the goals of augmenting diversity, increasing speed, reducing cost, the
use of synthetic data as a replacement for human participants is gaining traction
in AI research and product development. This talk critically examines the claim
that synthetic data can “augment diversity,” arguing that this notion is empirically
unsubstantiated, conceptually flawed, and epistemically harmful. While speed and
cost-efficiency may be achievable, they often come at the expense of rigour, insight,
and robust science. Drawing on research from dataset audits, model evaluations,
Black feminist scholarship, and complexity science, I argue that replacing human
participants with synthetic data risks producing both real-world and epistemic
harms at worst and superficial knowledge and cheap science at best
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
I'm lecturing about the "History of NLP" this week. What should I include? Any favorite anecdotes, images, people, methods? Slides, books, papers, or talks for inspiration or grounding? I've been maintaining a small collection here: www.are.na/maria-antoni...
are.na
🗄 history of NLP and the ACL | Are.na
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Isabelle Augenstein @iaugenstein.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Just under two weeks to go to apply to join our @copenlu.bsky.social lab as a PhD student or postdoc! ⤵️ #academicjobs #NLProc #XAI #HCI @aicentre.dk
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 15/01/2026
are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a... pls repost
About the PhD: 
Audits and evaluation of AI systems — and the broader context that AI systems operate in — have become central to conceptualising, quantifying, measuring and understanding the operations, failures, limitations, underlying assumptions, and downstream societal implications of AI systems. Existing AI audit and evaluation efforts are fractured, done in a siloed and ad-hoc manner, and with little deliberation and reflection around conceptual rigour and methodological validity.

This PhD is for a candidate that is passionate about exploring what a conceptually cogent, methodologically sound, and well-founded AI evaluation and safety research might look like. This requires grappling with questions such as:

    What does it mean to represent “ground truth” in proxies, synthetic data, or computational simulation?
    How do we reliably measure abstract and complex phenomena?
    What are the epistemological or methodological implications of quantification and measurement approaches we choose to employ? Particularly, what underlying presuppositions, values, or perspectives do they entail?
    How do we ensure the lived experiences of impacted communities play a critical role in the development and justification of measurement metrics and proxies?
    Through exploration of these questions, the candidate is expected to engage with core concepts in the philosophy of science, history of science, Black feminist epistemologies, and similar schools of thought to develop an in-depth understanding of existing practices with the aim of applying it to advance shared standards and best practice in AI evaluation.

The candidate is expected to integrate empirical (for example, through analysis or evaluation of existing benchmarks) or practical (for example, by executing evaluation of AI systems) components into the overall work.
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tpwrtrdmn @tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Oslo University Hospital caught using trans patients' journals for research purposes: - Without the patients' consent to participate in research - Affecting minors - 1700 of them - Taking highly sensitive information from said journals This is a HUGE breach.
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Wow submitting to ARR has reached the level of bureaucracy of filing a tax returns claim in Germany.
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Ah yes, the smell of returning from holiday and finding sb irrevocably deleted my main cloud instance for the project together with all data.
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Wine vending machines are one of the best parts of a holiday in Austria
A wine vending machine in Weinviertel, Austria
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Not sure how I missed this, but BisectingKMeans is _the shit_. Its fast, produces very crisp clusters for a range of problems, and is implemented in sklearn
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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 13/04/2025
1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.
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Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them) @zeerak.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Deadline for applying to SICSS-Edinburgh is coming up soon! The summer school will run from May 26 – June 6. Apply now 👉 sicss.io/2025/edinbur... #SICSS2025 #SICSSEdinburgh
sicss.io
Summer Institute in Computational Social Science
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 20/01/2025
Join us at our upcoming workshop at ICLR, XAI4Science: From Understanding Model Behavior to Discovering New Scientific Knwlg, Apr 27-28 submissions on a-priori (ante-hoc) & a-posteriori (post-hoc) interpretability & self-explainable models for understanding model’s behvr welcm tinyurl.com/3w8sddpm
openreview.net
ICLR 2025 Workshop XAI4Science
Welcome to the OpenReview homepage for ICLR 2025 Workshop XAI4Science
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
The 8yr old wanted (and got) a radio (the actual analog AM/FM thing) for Christmas and it is truly amusing to see a child that’s growing up with predominantly digital on-demand media explore radio
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ACL 2027 @aclmeeting.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
One of the longest running and prestigious journals in our field is the Computational Linguistics Journal. It's been around since 70s. It's got a brand new social media account now: @complingjournal.bsky.social Latest news about upcoming issues to be there there! #NLProc #CLjournal #NLP
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
tfw you press delete,delete,enter for 10mins b/c you’re too lazy to write a regex
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Currently at the postscript file format specification stage rabbit hole
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
*voting by letter and looking through the candidates on the list (name & bday)* *spots sb with a bday in 2000* *looks up* Huh, they must have just been born, how can they be on the candidate list?! #ElderMillenial
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Patrick Charlton-O'Shea @aesonique.itch.io · 04/01/2025
Boss made a dollar, Grandad made a dime. But that was a poem From a simpler time. Boss made a thousand, Gave my Dad a cent. But that coin paid the mortgage, Or at least it paid the rent. Now bosses make a billion, And give us workers jack. Then smugly blame society, For the labor that they lack.
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Craig Schmidt @craigschmidt.com · 20/12/2024
I made a starter pack for people in NLP working in the area of tokenization. Let me know if you'd like to be added go.bsky.app/8P9ftjL
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
This is starting to get out of hand...
A little python side project that started getting out of hand since the addition of a significant amount of (uncommented) c code and, recently, some fortran code.
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Hal Daumé III @haldaume3.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
starter pack for the Computational Linguistics and Information Processing group at the University of Maryland - get all your NLP and data science here! go.bsky.app/V9qWjEi
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Margaret Mitchell @mmitchell.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Inspired by @wimlds.bsky.social , I looked for a "Women in Machine Learning" starter pack and couldn't find one. So I created one! May have some mistakes. I'll try to do an AI ethics one next. 🤗 go.bsky.app/LT6CwNN
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Dr Ruby (she/her) @paperwhispers.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
**Black UK PhD students** Fully funded PhD study - fees and stipend -Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences -Faculty of Health and Life Sciences **Tell everyone** www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgr...
bristol.ac.uk
Black heritage PhD scholarships | Study at Bristol | University of Bristol
We welcome applications for full scholarships to postgraduate research programmes starting in 2025.
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Maike Osborne @maosbot.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Information Engineering in Oxford is currently advertising not one, but THREE associate (assistant) professorships: * eng.ox.ac.uk/jobs/job-det... * eng.ox.ac.uk/jobs/job-det... * eng.ox.ac.uk/jobs/job-det... I've been in this Department for 18 years, and it's a great place to work—come join us!
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Juan Diego Rodriguez @juand-r.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Next, starter packs for NLP/AI + X: NLP & Culture: bsky.app/starter-pack... NLP & Legal: bsky.app/starter-pack... NLP & Politics: bsky.app/starter-pack... AI for Conservation: bsky.app/starter-pack... AI for Science: bsky.app/starter-pack... AI, News and Journalism: bsky.app/starter-pack... ...
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Ashlee 🤟🏻 @ashleemboyer.com · 29/11/2024
As a disabled web accessibility practitioner. This pisses me off. Extremely. GENERATIVE AI DOES NOT AND CANNOT EVER REPRESENT DISABLED PEOPLE. Just fucking hire disabled people like me who know what they're doing. Believing AI over disabled people is ABLEISM and DEHUMANIZING. For fucks sake.
a11y-ai

Accessibility explained by those impacted.

Check any website for barriers and generate the perspective of those who face them.A11y-AI is an experiment using the storytelling capabilities of generative AI to bring the impact of accessibility violations to life. It aims to inspire web professionals to take action.
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Same, but with code. Also, each version contains 1 extremely cool feature and it’s practically impossible to extract it from either version
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NAACL @naaclmeeting.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
1. Hey NAACL #NLP #NLProc members please VOTE for the 25-26 exec! We have an amazing lineup of candidates, see statements here naacl.org/elections/20... How to vote: current members look for an email from Election Runner!
naacl.org
NAACL: Nations of the Americas Chapter of the ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics)
website for the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the ACL
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The Data Therapist in the Blue Sky @datatherapist.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
There! I went for it! (Let me know everyone if you want me to add or remove you) go.bsky.app/CUuio7g
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Jose Camacho Collados @camachocollados.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
📣 Hiring at Cardiff NLP! Both positions with an application deadline on January 3rd and to start from ~April 2025 (flexible). 📚 PhD scholarship: www.findaphd.com/phds/project... 🧑‍🔬 RA/Postdoc: krb-sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear... Please share!
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Ah yes, the Monday morning routine of putting random overlapping blocks in my calendar, so nobody even thinks about pinging me for ‘a quick sync’ 😂
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Computational Linguistics @UPF @colt-upf.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
⚡Postdoc opportunity w/ COLT Beatriu de Pinós contract, 3 yrs, competitive call by Catalan government. Apply with a PI (Marco Gemma or Thomas) Reqs: min 2y postdoc experience outside Spain, not having lived in Spain for >12 months in the last 3y. Application ~December-February (exact dates TBD)
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Martin Potthast @martin-potthast.com · 14/11/2024
Time for a starter pack on information retrieval: go.bsky.app/MXPJoTn
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Catherine Breslin @catherinebreslin.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
I created two starter packs for Women in AI, as the first filled up 😎 I really hope I’ve added everyone who’s asked to be added, but let me know if you don’t see yourself. Nominations also welcome! go.bsky.app/LaGDpqg go.bsky.app/2wr669L
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Gaël Varoquaux @gaelvaroquaux.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Scikit-learn is on bluesky 🧡💙
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
media.tenor.com
Queen Of Hearts Alice In Wonderland GIF
Alt: Queen Of Hearts Alice In Wonderland GIF
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
If you grant me the power to name projects, you end up with stuff like ‘Llemming’ or ‘Stoßdämpfer’
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Yoshitomo Matsubara @yoshitomo-matsubara.net · 21/11/2024
Here is a list of ML OSS & Open Source / Science enthusiasts I found on Bluesky 🦋 go.bsky.app/8MFcfXd Let me know if you find such people here! I'm still new here and probably the list misses many must-add people, so let's built it together💪
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Stephanie Hyland @hylandsl.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
phd students in ML for health: my team based in cambridge UK is hiring interns for 2025! jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/sh...
jobs.careers.microsoft.com
Search Jobs | Microsoft Careers
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Big computor corp not good at computoring
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Anna Rogers @annarogers.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
📢 Ultimate test of #NLP bluesky: I need emergency reviewers for NAACL submissions on encoders (one multilingual, one for sentence embeddings). Help a desperate editor abandoned by the ACs! Author response starts tomorrow, so that's a true emergency. If you're my hero, lmk your openreview profile.
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Adhiraj Ghosh @adhirajghosh.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
I've found starter packs on NLP, vision, graphics, etc. But personally, I would love to know and hear from researchers working on vision-language. So, let me know if you'd like to join this starter pack, would be happy to add! go.bsky.app/TENRRBb
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 21/11/2024
this was one of my early dataset audit work, specifically looking at ImageNet and 80 Million Tiny Images that exposed some horrible stuff in training datasets ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc...
ieeexplore.ieee.org
Large image datasets: A pyrrhic win for computer vision?
In this paper we investigate problematic practices and consequences of large scale vision datasets (LSVDs). We examine broad issues such as the question of consent and justice as well as specific conc...
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Edoardo Ponti @edoardo-ponti.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Last 5 days to apply for a PhD at #EdinburghNLP! Deadline: November 25 www.ed.ac.uk/studying/pos... If you are passionate about: - adaptive tokenization and memory in foundation models - modular deep learning - computational typology please message me or meet me at #NeurIPS2024!
ed.ac.uk
Informatics: ILCC: Language Processing, Speech Technology, Information Retrieval, Cognition
Study Informatics: ILCC: Language Processing, Speech Technology, Information Retrieval, Cognition at the University of Edinburgh. Our postgraduate degree programmes focus on natural language processin...
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Thomas Kober @tttthomasssss.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
#UnsolicitedPlaylistAdvice Always play Van Halen’s Ain’t talking bout love after Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit. The seque from white rabbits’ climax to Van Halen’s intro riff is simply perfect
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Catherine Arnett @catherinearnett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Trying to put together a list of multilingual* NLP people. If you want to be added, let me know! bsky.app/profile/did:... *Also, what do we call this intersection of multilingual and crosslingual research? I hate it when people say multilingual NLP to mean NLP for a non-English language.
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Bellingcat @bellingcat.com · 20/11/2024
We're continuing to add to our starter pack as more of our staff and contributors join. Check out the full current list here: go.bsky.app/HZSzS41
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